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Carmelo Anthony, left, is responsible for the fourth-most wins of any college player taken in the first round of the NBA Draft since 2003. Hakim Warrick ranks No. 57 in win shares.
(Stephen D. Cannerelli | scannerelli@syracuse.com)

Earlier this week, I looked at the widely-held belief that Syracuse's players in the NBA have performed more poorly than those from other programs over the past decade.

Using PER (personal efficiency rating) as our guide, the study found that most programs produce above-average NBA players about half the time with their first-round picks. Syracuse was no different, hovering just below 50 percent, poking a few holes in the argument that Jim Boeheim's system is a hindrance.

I like PER as a stat, but no equation is perfect for capturing the value of basketball players. If one existed we'd play the game on calculators instead of courts.

I found PER beneficial because it didn't penalize programs for players that got hurt (Greg Oden, TJ Ford, etc.) but I came to discover that it undervalued longevity. It considers Georgetown's Mike Sweetney, who ate himself out of the league, ahead of veterans Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison, for instance.

Unlike PER, which is a ratio, win shares are cumulative, so the longer a player plays, the more they'll collect. With many of Syracuse's busts lasting only a short time in the league, I thought it could offer a different perspective on the Orange.

After adding the win shares for each college program over the last 10 drafts, Syracuse's first-round picks ranked 11th in the country in NBA impact. Orange first-round draft picks have been responsible for 96 NBA wins, according to the statistic.

Texas leads the country over the past 10 years with 167.1 wins thanks to Kevin Durant and LaMarcus Aldridge. The Orange are 10 wins behind 10th-place Kansas.

Interestingly, the Jayhawks and Duke both finished ahead of Syracuse using this scoring rubric, although they fared worse using PER. Syracuse sits just ahead of Illinois and Kentucky.

Much of Syracuse's success, naturally, has come from Carmelo Anthony, who ranks fourth in the league over the past decade with 72.4 wins. The only college players who have had a bigger impact in winning NBA games than Anthony are Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.

Their teams, Wake Forest, Marquette and Georgia Tech, all finished ahead of Syracuse because of their performances. Paul and Wade beat Syracuse all by themselves.

Under PER, Anthony ranks No. 9 in value among players that were drafted out of college since 2003, tied with Bosh. Paul and Wade are tied at the top in PER value.

You can explore all this using the database on the bottom of the page which includes every first-round pick since 2003.

The rest of Syracuse's win total is made up largely by Hakim Warrick, who has been responsible for 20.4 NBA wins over the course of his career, a pretty good number for a role player who hasn't gotten a ton of credit.

That effort makes him the 57th-most valuable first-rounder that the college game has produced over the last decade, a very underrated career for the soft-spoken power forward.

The other five Syracuse players drafted in the first round since 2003 have been responsible for two wins or less. Dion Waiters, who fared well in the PER analysis and seems the best bet to change that trend, was responsible for just .9 wins last year. Much of that was due to the fact he played on a poor team and missed time with an injury.

Admittedly, this analysis isn't a complete picture, just like PER wasn't. The stat has some imperfections (Matt Bonner at 33.8, anyone?) and my analysis doesn't take second-round picks into account, which I would have liked to have done. Honestly, I ran out of time and I may bring this analysis back next season and include the second-round selections.

Doing so will hurt the Orange, who haven't produced a productive second-round player since Jason Hart in 2001. While I haven't done all the math, I know it would have boosted at least Kentucky ahead of SU and I suspect that might happen with a couple other teams.

While this study narrows the gap between Syracuse and its negative national perception, it still seems to show that Syracuse's first-round picks haven't performed quite as poorly as popular opinion would have us believe.